Halloween Universal Book One: Farewell Earth
by Snowy Mountain
Summary: Inspired by "The Traveller Chronicles" on Twisting the Hellmouth website. The Halloween Spell sends Sunnydale and its inhabitants across the galaxy aboard the SDF-1 and accompanied by a number of other starships from various other science fiction series are lost in space. Xovers with other science fiction and anime series.
1. The Nail

"_For want of a nail the shoe was lost,  
for want of a shoe the horse was lost,  
for want of a horse the knight was lost,  
for want of a knight the battle was lost,  
for want of a battle the kingdom was lost.  
So a kingdom was lost—all for want of a nail."_

—Ancient Proverb

* * *

In many universes, in many realities, Valerie DeJesus plays a small but rather insignificant role in the history of the world. She is but a small cog within the great wheels of fate and destiny that spin and revolve.

In many universes. In many realities.

But sometimes, even the best of cogs have a momentary catch. In Valerie DeJesus' case, she hesitated a second too long when she was reversing out of her parking space … and struck another car.

And that single, tiny, seemingly insignificant incident would cause a cascade of actions that would forever cause the wheels of fate and destiny to spin and revolve in a whole new direction.

It was a delay of a mere half an hour as she and the other driver examined their vehicles and exchanged phone numbers and insurance company policies. She was in a bad mood when she returned to the office, knowing that her insurance rates was going to be jacked up for this minor fender bender. So when she opened up the backlog of orders on her computer manifest, she pressed down a bit too hard with her pen. The ink bled and turned her usually neat writing into a mess.

And the cog spun…

* * *

Ronald Greenwood frowned as he squinted at the blurry order form. _Shit, is that a 5 or a 6? OK, that's a 9. Or possibly a 7._ He considered calling the front office and getting them to resend the information but he had skipped breakfast and he was already an hour late for his lunch break. His stomach growled and he shrugged, deciding that he really didn't care and grabbed whatever digits looked closed enough and started throwing them into the boxes.

_Not my problem,_ he decided as he swiftly boxed up the stuff and ran off the mailing labels.

_Sunnydale. Weird name for a town,_ he thought as he peeled off the backing and stuck it to the boxes. The name already fading from his mind as he hurried out, already focused on lunch. _Let's see, McDonalds or Arby's? Decisions, decisions..._

And the wheel revolved…

* * *

Ethan Rayne; Part-Time Entrepreneur, Part-Time Chaos Mage, and Full-Time Pain in the Ass beamed as he handed over the signed order form and rubbed his hands together gleefully in anticipation. Then frowned as the FedEx employee began bringing in a lot more boxes than he assumed there would be. _What the Bloody Hell?_

He grabbed one box and nearly wrenched his back out. _A bunch of sodding costumes should not weigh this much…_

Whoever these shippers were, they definitely knew how to tape and seal. It took him a good five minutes to cut open the box. A little over three of those minutes were in trying to find a proper knife sharp enough to do the job. He peeked inside and scowled. "What is this?" Ethan demanded as he got a good look at the contents, he pulled out DVD case titled _Robotech: The Macross Saga._

"Hey, I just deliver them pal," the FedEx employee proclaimed as he set down the last box with a thump.

"This isn't what I bloody ordered. Take it back!"

"You signed for 'em. They're yours. Take it up with the senders," the deliveryman proclaimed with a wave of his hand and exited.

Ethan glared at the retreating mailman. He made a few subtle gestures and waited for a moment.

Several seconds later, he was rewarded with a scream as a skateboarder lost control and collided with the FedEx employee. Their heads struck and the mail carrier stumbled backwards and onto the wheeled board and it shot out from under his foot like a greased pig and causing the man to nearly do a complete somersault in midair before making a painful landing that broke at least four bones in the blighter's body.

Ethan maliciously grinned. "The customer is always right. Poncy twit," he muttered and began hunting around for the packaging information. Peeling the label off, he searched for a phone number and began punching buttons on the telephone grumbling.

After being forced to listen to an automated answering machine and punch in series of numbers to scroll through automated menus, then being put on hold four times, and being transferred twice, Ethan was fantasizing about how difficult it would be to magically seal all of the doors and windows to this bloody company and creating a portal to some dimension of excrement to fill the building entirely.

_It would take some judicious tinkering with the old never-empty horn of plenty spell, but he was sure that he could—_he lost his train of thought as the damn muzak (something he was sure that demons invented for their own hell dimensions) cut off and the service representative (and what a load of crap that title _**was!**_ And also the inspiration of his ever-filling pile of crap idea) finally got back from whatever it was she was doing.

"No—no! I wanted the cosplay costumes, the costumes! Not a bunch of tapes and books—fine, manga!"

"Two weeks?! Halloween is this weekend!"

"Thanks for BLOODY-WELL NOTHING!"

Ethan slammed the phone down. "Wanker."

He drummed his fingers on the glass counter as he studied the boxes stacked up around. _Great. Now what he supposed to do with this junk until they picked it up?_ he wondered. It was a pity that most of his spell knowledge didn't really deal with menial work. _Although—_he reached down and picked up a grimoire and began flipping through the pages. _There was a spell about summoning Cornish Pixies wasn't there? A modified befuddlement hex might work to convince them to serve as an impromptu labor force…_

A minor event. A major change. The cogs of Fate and the wheels of Destiny are ever helpless at the hands of the seemingly tiny and infinitesimal.

As it ever is.

And as it always has been.

* * *

**HALLOWEEN UNIVERSAL**

**BOOK ONE:** Farewell Earth

**Chapter One:** _The Nail_

* * *

Ethan tried not to giggle as he pranced around the bust of Janus and the freshly painted symbols on the floor of the back room. And bumped into one of the towering piles of boxes of manga and what-not and grimaced as it swayed dangerously.

He was getting robbed he was. The square footage was pathetically tiny for what he was paying to lease this space. On the other hand, considering how often the renters vanished and left the property owners eating the unpaid cost, he could have—Ethan grimaced and pinched the bridge of his nose. _Good Lord! What was he thinking about? This respectable business crap snuck in and took over it did._

Calmer, he strode around the glyphs and reviewed them against his notes, checking to make sure that all of it was done properly. _God! He couldn't wait for tonight!_ He thought to himself as he rubbed his hands together gleefully.

* * *

The gigantic black van paused outside Ethan's temporarily leased shop. "We're lost aren't we?" the almost-as-large black man growled as he remembered passing by this dump less than twenty minutes ago.

"Now now, Bosco, don't get all het up! You know what it does to your blood pressure!" his grinning companion brought back up the map to his face, which was upside-down and also of Honolulu, Hawaii; the driver noticed, feeling a vein pulsate in his temple.

"Why did you let this crazy fool navigate!" he yelled over his shoulder to the other two men seated in the back.

The older white-haired man shrugged laconically as he spoke around his mouthful of cigar. "He asked."

The other man was studying a fistful of cards with a frown, "What kind of name is Sunnydale for a town anyways?"

"It's just a quiet, ordinary, little town. Just perfect for us to lay low for a week or so after that last mission," the older man retorted as he calmly adjusted the placement of his handful of cards.

The driver snarled, "This sucks Hannibal! We have gots to get better paying missions!"

"We can't exactly be all that choosey when it comes to our clients."

"Yeah, well, it would help if we didn't get so many charity cases that we barely break even most of the time," the other backseater muttered as he discarded a pair of cards and picked up a new set. He remained blank faced as he examined the new cards. _No help at all._

"I got it! We turn south on Beretania and turn left onto Hotel!" the front seat passenger/navigator proclaimed proudly.

The black man groaned and shook his head sadly. _I sometimes wonder whose crazier? Murdock or me for sticking around?_

* * *

"The stars! Full of stars!"

Spike glanced at his sire, Drusilla the Mad bouncing around gleefully. "What about the stars Dru?" he inquired.

"We're going! All of us! Going to the stars! The stars! So bright! Twinkle, twinkle in the sky! Diamonds in the sky!"

"Uh huh," Spike said with a tolerant smile at the inane ramblings. He was used to it. "That's nice pet."

"We'll all be different soon! My insides won't be the same! None of us will be! Even Daddy and that nasty Slayer girl!"

Spike put a bookmark and closed the poetry book he had been perusing and focused his attention on Drusilla. "The Slayer? Tell me more love…"

* * *

Events played out as they had in dozens of other dimensions as when Ethan Rayne cast his Chaos Spell, affecting hundreds of his specially prepared costumes that he had laboriously pre-spelled to interact with the Chaos Spell. Buffy Summers was transformed into an 18th Century noblewoman, Xander Harris became a soldier, and Willow Rosenberg became a ghost. Willow would alert Rupert Giles to the threat and Giles would immediately attempt to force Ethan to abort the spell.

That's where everything went wrong…

* * *

"How do I stop it Ethan!" Giles roared as he punctuated his query with another kick to the ribs.

"Break … statue," Ethan gasped out.

Giles whirled around and took a step towards the statue and then sidewise to avoid the stack of boxes that ascended nearly to the ceiling. Ethan wheezed as he pried open an eye and glared at the back of his old friend. And then at the boxes filled with those useless bits of junk delivered a few days back. He smiled shark-like as he raised his foot and kicked out hard.

His boot hit the bottom box which bowing slightly, already showing it was at near-collapse from all of the weight resting on it. Giles' head whipped round, **"ETHAN!"** he roared as an avalanche of boxes came crashing down on his head. Ethan breathed raspily as he checked his ribs and cast a healing spell he knew. He took a deeper breath and sighed in relief.

He heard a soft moan of pain from somewhere in the pile of split boxes and chuckled. Licking his lips, he began to shove and push the debris aside to find the Watcher half-buried in a mound of books. _Rather fitting actually,_ Ethan thought whimsically, having learned that his old chum posed as a librarian.

"Look at you Ripper. How pathetic. You've gotten soft old boy. It's almost a shame to put you out of your misery."

He picked up a still intact box and considered it thoughtfully before discarding it and trying another one. _Ah._ He chuckled and he lifted it up.

"What is it that they say?" he asked conversationally. " _'Live by the sword, die by the sword?'_ I'm going to batter you to death with a crate of books. Kind of _apropos_ don't you think?" he asked grinning. He swung the box up over his head, forgetting that his footing such as it was—was very unstable.

It abruptly slid underneath him and Ethan found himself tilting off balance and falling towards the pentacle and the glowing Janus statue. "OH SHIIIII—"

* * *

In other universes, Rupert Giles' breaking of the Janus bust was nothing less than a forced disruption of the Halloween Spell Matrix. Akin to smashing a crystal goblet with a sledgehammer. Crude but effective.

Unlike Giles however, Ethan was the original spellcaster and thus, he had a far greater degree of control over the spell itself. And the spell had a far greater influence on Ethan as well.

He came crashing down, shattering the Janus bust and causing the box he was crashing to spill out it's contents of science fiction anime, various novels, and even a few model kits. The angle of his fall also broke his neck and killed him instantly.

* * *

Ask ten magicians for an explanation about the inner workings of magic and you will get ten different answers. At _**minimum.**_

Some will profess that it is about intent. Others will say it is about will. Another will say it is about faith. And then there are those who will call it an art and another who will proclaim that it is a type of science with it's own stringent rules and limitations. Someone of a particular bent will proclaim that it is all about power. Others will relate that magic is about harnessing the flow of energy in the universe itself while another will argue that the only power that magic taps lies within.

And that is not even touching about the various different schools, sects, branches, types, subsects, and kinds of spellcasting, enchanting, conjuring, rituals, potions, and summoning that each one has. And the various extradimensional entities that muck everything up doesn't help either.

Basically, the first thing to understanding about magic is that all of the so-called masters and experts can't explain it themselves. None of them can. It quite literally defies all explanations.

But there one singular thing that all of the various systems and branches and types of magic all agree upon; the one primal, central tenant regarding magic.

Magic requires _**sacrifice.**_

It could involve nothing more difficult towards the hours of study to master the pronunciation of spoken words and gestures to the expenditure of several hours/months/years of their stored life energies. Or to the more profane as to sacrificing their own soul to the odd demonic creature.

And Ethan Rayne inadvertently tapped into the most potent of sacrificial magics. Of blood, of bone, of spirit, and his own life.

* * *

The Halloween Spell went rampant as it was suddenly supercharged as it were. It's raw transformative energies needed various fetishes and totems to work, relying on the pre-spelled costumes to execute them. It found several lying around (the anime and manga and odds and ends) and latched onto them.

It stalled momentarily as even Ethan's life force wasn't quite enough to perform such massive and widespread alterations. Like someone furiously revving a car's engine while holding down on the brake, the Spell began building up to a cataclysmic force akin to a magical nuclear bomb.

Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on one's point of view), Richard Wilkins had long begun a process of seeding the Hellmouth with a number of mystical artifacts such as the Glove of Myneghon, the Amulet of Balthazar, the Gem of Amara, and hundreds more.

If someone had bothered to ever plot out the location of all these artifacts, they would have been surprised to discover that it made for a rather interesting and complex series of glyphs and runes that formed the basis of several potent spells and enchantments laid over the entire Hellmouth.

If Wilkins had ever bothered to reveal his long-term project to the supernatural circles, he would have certainly been regarded as a genius in spellcrafting and magic and at least a century ahead of his time.  
Wilkins had quite literally pioneered principles of creating a permanent spell trap. It harnessed the powers of the Hellmouth and redistributing their energies, funneling it to enhance his personal powers but also spreading it throughout the town itself which contributed to what some dubbed, _"The Sunnydale Effect"_ which caused people to dismiss or ignore the fact that this was certainly no ordinary town at all.

And it had only grown more and more powerful as the years and decades had passed.

It also had a nasty side effect of poisoning and corrupting humans who lived here, enhancing their selfishness and pettiness and other base desires. Children tended to be immune to this, but as they grew up; they lost their innocence and their meager protection from the corrupting influence that rotted away at them.

As it so happened, as the Halloween Spell sought more power, it sought to draw strength from the ambient negative energies being generated from the Hellmouth. It helped that Roman God Janus represented change and also of gateways and passages; and the Hellmouth was in fact, a weak point in the dimensional barriers. It was a door in the broadest and loosest of sense and thus, it fell into Janus' purview as well.

Ethan had originally designed the spell matrix to use Janus to aid in the transformative qualities of the costumes. Now, it drew upon Janus to tap into the power generated by Hellmouth and at first began to draw a trickle and dribbles and then … it found the power taps and began pulling power from them as well.

Across Sunnydale, those magical artifacts began exploding from the sheer raw energy being funneled through them. The entire town began to shake and tremble as the Hellmouth itself was being used as the main power source for the Halloween Spell.

And around the world itself, the smaller Hellmouths began imploding as they were ruthlessly laundered for their meager share of negative energies as the main Hellmouth underneath Sunnydale fought to maintain it's structural integrity, pulling whatever strength it could from wherever it could. A process that it was steadily losing despite it's best efforts as the Halloween Spell demanded more and more of its power. It was too hungry, it had it's hooks dug in too deep as it devoured more and more of it's supernatural energies to fuel itself.

Raw magical energies seethed, boiled, and thundered above the skies of Sunnydale … and shadowy shapes began to coalesce in midair even as across the entire city, people and demons alike collapsed, screaming as the Halloween Spell used the template of the various anime, science fiction movies, and model kits to alter them.

And the Halloween Spell fed more and more power into them … warping them, changing them, transforming them…The Halloween Spell went rampant as it was suddenly supercharged as it were. It's raw transformative energies needed various fetishes and totems to work, relying on the pre-spelled costumes to execute them. It found several lying around (the anime and manga and odds and ends) and latched onto them.

It stalled momentarily as even Ethan's life force wasn't quite enough to perform such massive and widespread alterations. Like someone furiously revving a car's engine while holding down on the brake, the Spell began building up to a cataclysmic force akin to a magical nuclear bomb.

Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on one's point of view), Richard Wilkins had long begun a process of seeding the Hellmouth with a number of mystical artifacts such as the Glove of Myneghon, the Amulet of Balthazar, the Gem of Amara, and hundreds more.

If someone had bothered to ever plot out the location of all these artifacts, they would have been surprised to discover that it made for a rather interesting and complex series of glyphs and runes that formed the basis of several potent spells and enchantments laid over the entire Hellmouth.

If Wilkins had ever bothered to reveal his long-term project to the supernatural circles, he would have certainly been regarded as a genius in spellcrafting and magic and at least a century ahead of his time.  
Wilkins had quite literally pioneered principles of creating a permanent spell trap. It harnessed the powers of the Hellmouth and redistributing their energies, funneling it to enhance his personal powers but also spreading it throughout the town itself which contributed to what some dubbed, _"The Sunnydale Effect"_ which caused people to dismiss or ignore the fact that this was certainly no ordinary town at all.

And it had only grown more and more powerful as the years and decades had passed.

It also had a nasty side effect of poisoning and corrupting humans who lived here, enhancing their selfishness and pettiness and other base desires. Children tended to be immune to this, but as they grew up; they lost their innocence and their meager protection from the corrupting influence that rotted away at them.

As it so happened, as the Halloween Spell sought more power, it sought to draw strength from the ambient negative energies being generated from the Hellmouth. It helped that Roman God Janus represented change and also of gateways and passages; and the Hellmouth was in fact, a weak point in the dimensional barriers. It was a door in the broadest and loosest of sense and thus, it fell into Janus' purview as well.

Ethan had originally designed the spell matrix to use Janus to aid in the transformative qualities of the costumes. Now, it drew upon Janus to tap into the power generated by Hellmouth and at first began to draw a trickle and dribbles and then … it found the power taps and began pulling power from them as well.

Across Sunnydale, those magical artifacts began exploding from the sheer raw energy being funneled through them. The entire town began to shake and tremble as the Hellmouth itself was being used as the main power source for the Halloween Spell.

And around the world itself, the smaller Hellmouths began imploding as they were ruthlessly laundered for their meager share of negative energies as the main Hellmouth underneath Sunnydale fought to maintain it's structural integrity, pulling whatever strength it could from wherever it could. A process that it was steadily losing despite it's best efforts as the Halloween Spell demanded more and more of its power. It was too hungry, it had it's hooks dug in too deep as it devoured more and more of it's supernatural energies to fuel itself.

Raw magical energies seethed, boiled, and thundered above the skies of Sunnydale … and shadowy shapes began to coalesce in midair even as across the entire city, people and demons alike collapsed, screaming as the Halloween Spell used the template of the various anime, science fiction movies, and model kits to alter them.

And the Halloween Spell fed more and more power into them … warping them, changing them, transforming them…

* * *

The demon inside him was shrieking in agony. Angel wasn't feeling so hot either as his entire body trembled like he was experiencing a seizure.

_***Thump.***_

He clenched his eyes shut and tried not to scream.

_***Thump.***_

_What was wrong with him?_ The demon's voice faded away and so did the pain.

After several long minutes of gasping, he slowly managed to pull himself up into a sitting position.

_***Thump. Thump. Thump.***_

_Wha-what the Hell was that noise?_ He swung his head to the right. And then left.

_***Thump. Thump. Thump.***_

The rhythmic noise continued. Absently, he rubbed his chest and froze as he felt something he hadn't experienced in over 200 years. His heartbeat. He had a heartbeat.

_What the Hell was going on?_ Absently, he noticed that the lightsaber prop had fallen out of his pocket. He had picked it up off the ground earlier from some fleeing kid with the intention of returning it to him, but had gotten rather distracted with all of the strange happenings going on tonight and had simply stuck it in his coat pocket. He picked it up and frowned. It was … heavier than before. It wasn't cheap plastic anymore. Some instinct warned him against pointing it at himself and he touched the ignition button.

_***VVVRRRUUUMMMM!***_

He almost dropped it when a bluish-blade shot out of the emitter shroud. "Sithspit!" he blurted out. Then he frowned and cocked his head. _Wait—what did I just say?_

He grimaced and absently rubbed his cheek thoughtfully. Then he made a face as he felt smooth shaved skin instead of the familiar feeling of his beard. _But—I've never grown a beard before…right?_

Then he noticed the growing lightning storm above in the skies that was so bright that it looked more like noon than night. Then a shadow blotted out the light and his jaw dropped as he took in the familiar saucer joined by a graceful neck to a massive cylinder accompanied by a pair of glowing nacelles. _That was—but—but it couldn't be!_

"No. Fucking. Way." he breathed, feeling light headed and wondering if he was going to faint as this latest jolt to his reality was going to be the tipping point for him.

* * *

Jonathan Levinson blinked and stared in awe at his surroundings. He was sitting on the bridge of the Enterprise. And his home-made James Kirk outfit was better than new after a bunch of weirdos dressed as pirates had attacked him. He whooped in delight.

"THIS IS **AWESOME!**"

* * *

**"FRAK ME!"** Harmony Kendall howled as she jerked her Viper sidewise to avoid colliding with this gigantic … Cylon-like thing that seemed to be coalescing in midair.

Then she froze.

"Wait a second! I DON'T KNOW HOW TO FLY! I FLUNKED DRIVER'S ED!" she wailed. **"EEEEEEEEKKKK!"**

* * *

He was Admiral Bruno J. Gloval.

And yet, he was not.

He had lived a life of military service, of the unrelenting Global War, and thrust into the horror of the First Robotech War and dying at the end of it. And now he was alive again. Another man would have broken under the stress, of the sheer impossibility of it all.

But he wasn't just Admiral Bruno J. Gloval. He remembered another life. He remembered being Captain First Rank Marko Alexandrovich Ramius, late of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics' Red Fleet before the Central Intelligence Agency had quietly retired him to this town after his extensive debriefings.

And whatever else his detractors would have called him; sentimental fool, maverick, naively political; none of them ever stated that Marko Ramius lacked a will of iron.

Marko Ramius was used to the unexpected. He had grown up in an era of tyranny that even the Czars of Old would be hard pressed to imitate. He had navigated the brutally Byzantine labyrinths of Russian politics to command the first submarines of the Russian Navy. He had defected with the entire Russian Navy chasing after him and along the way, absconded with an entire nuclear submarine under the paranoid eyes of the Russian Navy with the entire American Fleet breathing down his neck.

And with the same iron will that refused to back down, he similarly refused to suffer any hysterical fit or have a psychological breakdown.

"Give me a Status Report!" he roared in his command voice.

The bridge crew looking dazed and confused snapped into focus at the barked order. "We … we're … spatial coordinates are on Earth? We're above North America!"

"There's … some sort of … spatial distortion around us? Radar is scrambled, Lidar is … being reflected?"

Suddenly several of the displays started blaring and flashing red alert lights. Ramius felt something cold forming in the pit of his stomach. Somehow he just couldn't convince himself that was a _**good**_ sign.

"It's the Space-Fold Engine! It's on overload!" one the technicians shrieked.

Ramius paled as Gloval's memories flooded him. "_Bozhe moi._ Here we go _again."_

* * *

**TO BE CONTINUED…**

* * *

**A/N:** This story and it's contents were directly inspired by Kedrann and his epic, _"The Traveller Chronicles"_ on the 'Twisting the Hellmouth' website which specializes in Buffy & Angel Crossovers. I was a big fan of the story and gravely disappointed when it came to an end. In case you were wondering; yes, Kedrann does know about this story. I let him know what I was doing and my intentions. He agreed that some of the basic principles and story ideas were the same but was different enough that he thought I wasn't ripping him off.

However, I am hereby humbly dedicate this story in tribute to the story, _"The Traveller Chronicles"_ and it's magnanimous author for letting me play around with his ideas.

Also, I don't own anything.

Harmony Gold USA and Tatsunoko Production Co. Ltd. owns _Robotech._  
_Star Trek_ belongs to CBS and Paramount.  
_Star Wars_ is the property of Walt Disney Company.  
_Battlestar Galactica_ is from Glen A. Larson.  
_The A-Team_ is by Stephen J. Cannell Productions and 20TH Century Fox.  
The character of Marko Ramius is from _"The Hunt for Red October"_ written by Tom Clancy of course.  
And _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ belongs to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy Productions.

The more series I add, I'll let you know who they belong to.


	2. Adieu

**Command Bridge Tower  
Super-Dimensional Fortress-1  
****Robotech: The Macross Saga**

Ramius' stomach was doing flip-flops that were only partially due to the terror flooding him. The part of him that was Gloval remembered the sensation and he knew what was happening. It was starting. The Space-Fold.

Space was beginning to distort and thus gravity was fluctuating as well. Ramius tore his eyes widened with horror from the viewport that enabled him to gaze down at the hapless Sunnydale.

Without a care of protocol, he grabbed the earphones with the attached mike from one of the bridge ratings, tore it off, and jammed it up against his head.

"Disengage the Reflex Furnaces!" Ramius roared into the mike and squinted as he listened to the reply through the one of the headset earphones, grimacing. "Then find someone who CAN!" Ramius barked, barely managing to resist the urge to break the stupid headset in a fit of rage and panic.

Space-folding in a planet's gravity well was considered the height of stupidity. That was why the Zentraedi were so surprised and taken aback at the tactic when Gloval had executed it out of sheer ignorance. Some might have deemed it broadly imaginative and tactically innovative.

Others more experienced with the concepts of the physics behind warping of space/time would have scornfully declared it suicidal at best. Basically, you'd have better odds of playing a deranged version of Russian Roulette and pulling the trigger five times on each spin, counting on the odds that you **_wouldn't_** blow your brains out on one of the trigger pulls.

Gloval had spent considerable time discussing the situation with Exedore and consulting the translated Zentraedi Records and been appalled at just how close the planet Earth dodged a huge bullet during his blunder. Basically, bad things happened when you fiddled with the gravitational constant of a planet. In essence, they were lucky that ONLY a small section of the planet vanished into hyperspace. The last major Fold accident in Zentraedi Records had caused a major geological fault that practically ripped the planet in half. Smaller accidents had resulted in some planets merely being knocked out of their orbital axis or caused a derangement in ozone layers that resulted in an uncontrolled bombardment of ultraviolet rays that killed only 99 percent of the organic life on the planet.

That was why the safety and failsafe systems for Space-Folds were so extensive on any ship. Of course on a properly outfitted and maintained ship, there was no way he would have been able to perform such a boneheaded maneuver anyways. There were numerous cutoffs and failsafes to prevent such an occurrence. Of course, humanity were barely aware of what they were doing when they put the damn alien ship back together—they had inadvertently disabled those same failsafes.

The SDF-1 would to catapulted—where? God only knew. They could wind up in the middle of a star or in the center of a planet—even if the navigational computers weren't screwed up, the unstable fold bubble due to Earth's gravity well would misjump them anyways.

But at least the SDF-1 had a chance of surviving that. The inhabitants of Sunnydale on the other hand had absolutely zero.

"Is there any way that we can leave the atmosphere? Get some safe distance between us and Sunnydale? Not the mention the rest of the planet?" Ramius demanded hopefully.

One of the bridge personnel shook her head, "No sir! We're barely able to maintain our present altitude with all of the energy that the Space-Fold Engines are draining from the Reflex Furnaces!"

Lisa—or whoever was wearing her uniform, turned from her bridge station, "Sir, could we tap into the Civil Defense Broadcast System? Send out an alert to get people to take cover before we fold?" she said urgently, immediately grasping the ghastly consequences of a Space-Fold would have on Sunnydale.

Ramius shook his head. He had already thought of that. Even using the SDF-1's external speakers to broadcast an emergency alert message.

But what good would it do? What protection could the civilians seek? Where could the hapless civilians possibly go? If—by sheer chance they **_didn't_** instantly kill themselves by rematerializing in deep space—the inhabitants of Sunnydale were as good as dead.

The only reason why Macross Island had so many survivors was that the civilians had been evacuated into emergency shelters. Shelters that included being pressurized—in the event of a biological or chemical assault by alien invaders. And as it turned out, also vacuum rated for a short time.

Long enough for the SDF-1 to get organized and frantically begin rescue operations at least. Even so, Ramius knew—something that the anime series didn't show was that at least one shelter's seal had failed and the entire occupants had literally suffocated to death. In a sense, that was a mercy that their ending had been relatively quick.

But Ramius knew of no 1950s or 60s Cold War Civil Defense-built shelter that could possibly protect the inhabitants within from the unimaginable of having the entire town plunged into the unforgiving depths of deep space with no atmosphere.

He felt his soul shriveling at the thought that he would get a first row seat at watching almost 38,500 people die from explosive decompression. And it would be all Ramius' fault.

* * *

**HALLOWEEN UNIVERSAL**

**BOOK ONE:** Farewell Earth

**Chapter Two:**_ Adieu_

* * *

**1630 Revello Drive  
Sunnydale, California  
Buffy the Vampire Slayer**

"It's all that skank Summers' fault."

Cordelia closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and then gazed at the damn mirror once more. Nope. Still a frickin' cat girl.

It had finally happened just like Cordelia knew it would. After all this time of her adroit dodging the weird, strange, and bizarre crap that constantly happened to Buffy Summers—Summers had finally fucked up. And now Cordelia Chase was a goddamn cat woman with more hair on her entire body than her head.

Summers undoubtedly had managed to sail through this whole screwed up situation without a blemish on her! Even if poor Cordelia invested a fortune in Nair and possibly some super-wax remover products, she wouldn't ever pass as human even without her new fur coat. Life was so unfair!

"Oh why? Why? Why does horrible things happen to good people?" Cordelia hissed to her mirror reflection, noting that the pair of the ears on the top of her head flattened, reflecting her mood and claws had popped out some sort of concealed slits on her fingers. It was official. She had been inducted into the strange weirdo club with the other dweebs and losers like Xander and Willow.

She was sure that her fur was going to stink something awful when it got wet too.

Another thing to blame that faux blonde-dyed Summers for. _She was so going to pay for this!_

* * *

**Bridge  
U.S.S Enterprise  
Naval Construction Contract (NCC) 1701  
Star Trek**

The turbolift doors whooshed open and several more crewmen stumbled out. Some looked a little dazed and even more so, Jonathan Levinson recognized that they were wearing a mixture of various uniforms from different eras or rather series. "Name, Rank, and Specialty?" he inquired, getting a DS9 Environmental Tech, a TOS Yeoman, and a TNG Operations Officer whom he drafted to serve as a makeshift Communications Specialist. He left the new Communications Officer to try and puzzle his way through the anachronistic (to him!) communications station.

Jon always knew Sunnydale was weirder than most towns—but even he had to admit that this transcended into a whole new **_plateau_** of weirdness. The part of him that was James T. Kirk was more interested in eyeballing the shapely rear of the Yeoman and quietly giving thanks that the miniskirt uniforms were still in service. _It would have been a crime to cover up those legs! Damn!_ He struggled to refocus his thoughts but it was difficult. Not only did Jon have the persona of Captain James T. Kirk, a notorious womanizer lurking in his head but was also in the body of a hormonal and horny teenager.

He reached out and stroked the armrest of the Captain's—HIS chair almost reverently before he gingerly sat down in it and leaned back. _Wow. So cool. This was like a dream come true—_

The turbolift doors whooshed open once more and a high-pitched screech erupted. **"I KNEW IT! YOU ROTTEN KIDS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS!"**

Jon whirled around, his back snapping erect as a short humanoid came charging out of the turbo elevator.

He cringed at the sight. The short stocky frame. The huge swelling hairless dome. The ridged nose. The impossibly gigantic ears. _By the Great Bird of the Galaxy,_ Jon thought in complete and total shock. It was Principal Snyder.

And he was a Ferengi.

Snyder bared his mouth full of sharpened teeth at him, "You brats have finally gone too far this time! EXPULSION!"

Jon cowered at the horrific sight.

_This was a nightmare._

* * *

**Elsewhere**

The Hellmouth was a weak point in the dimension barriers. It was a nexus point, a gateway to other realms that tended to be on the lower end of energy quantum spectrum.

And it was trembling like mad. More and more of it's supernatural energies were being drained to fuel the massive Halloween Spell—already the lesser Hellmouths that radiated out from the Sunnydale main one had collapsed upon themselves, completely sapped and exhausted of their power.

It was the last one on Earth. And it was dying. And on some quasi-sentient fashion—it was aware of it's impending doom. Even worse, it could feel its connection to the infernal realms being shredded apart by some space/temporal distortion and it desperately sought to maintain its fragile stability.

In essence, the Hellmouth was a door coming **_in_**. And the SDF-1 was creating a door going **_out_**. In the same area. Even at the best of times, these dimensional doors were inherent unstable and this tug-of-war for supremacy merely increased the complications.

The SDF-1's Space-Fold Engines were howling and straining as the static trans-dimensional bubble formed momentarily and then collapsed, bursting apart like a soap bubble as the Hellmouth fought to maintain itself while the Fold Engines sought to break them apart.

On the one hand, it bought them extra time to try and save the unprotected populace. On the other hand—one of the two eventually had to give. Either the Space-Fold Engines or the Hellmouth. The resulting fallout from either one was bound to be on the spectacularly messy side…

* * *

**Location Undetermined  
Core Universe Undetermined**

Willow Rosenberg opened her eyes and found herself staring at an unfamiliar ceiling. There was a chime and she saw illumination panels brighten from a nocturnal level to one more suited for daytime illumination as the smart computer detected the change the change in her conscious state.

Then she frowned. _No 20th Century technology existed to do that!_ She jerked upright and stumbled slightly. She glanced down at her body and did a double take. "AAAACK!"

She frantically looked around and was relieved that no one was present to see her dressed up in such—such scandalous clothes! _Hell, she had swimsuits that possessed more … material than this skimpy bikini. And—_she glanced down again. _Not only that, but when did her breasts practically double in size?_ She discreetly peeked here and there including beneath the small bits of fabric—_not to mention when did I get a full body tan?_

Willow decided to ignore that in favor of finding some clothes that covered more of her body—which was also much more muscular than she remembered being. She further ignored the fact that whoever had dressed her up had to have shaved … certain areas. And not just her legs.

She started growling as rummaging through the closet with the Star Trek-style doors that slid open obediently quickly showed her that her current set of clothes were the least provocative and demure outfit available.

She frowned as she found a Kuan Yin D480 laser pistol. And then another one. She carefully set it aside along with a not inconsiderable arsenal pile. Clearly whoever's room this was happened to be was a solid convert to the notion of peace through superior firepower.

If it wasn't painfully obvious that whoever's closet this was happened to be female, Willow would have suspected that the gun nut—er _enthusiast_—was trying to compensate for something with the hugely oversized and overpowered weapons.

And overly enthralled with explosions to boot as she found a fifth Serec TM super-eradication grenade with the high-ex napalm-thermite fragmentation option for when you needed to not only blow something up into itty-bitty pieces but turn any inconvenient itty-bitty pieces into ash. She finished unwrapping it from a piece of fabric that someone might generously proclaim as underwear and what Willow would have declared to be a piece of string. _Well whoever she was,_ Willow reflected absently as she glanced at the model number, _she did have good taste in explosives._ The Serecs weren't the wimpy 4500 model but the upgraded (and much more expensive) 4700 version with the super-stabilized synthetic napalm gel and enhanced igniter cap for improved safe handling—and the extra kick for a higher and wider explosive spread.

Willow was so distracted by everything from waking up in a strange room and her body alterations with her dire need for better clothing that it didn't even occur to her to wonder just how did she have such an intimate knowledge of the high-tech sci-fi weaponry that didn't even exist yet.

* * *

**Command Bridge Tower  
Super-Dimensional Fortress-1  
Robotech: The Macross Saga**

It was simply easier to think of herself as Claudia Grant at the moment. She supposed that it had helped that she had never seen _Robotech_ or whatever anime series that it was actually based upon before, because having an incredibly realistic lifetime of memories of a fictional character crammed into her skull would definitely increased the possibility of her freaking out about the impossible situation that she was in. Because right now—if she tried to think of herself as being Denise Watts, a Psych Major at UC Sunnydale, she'd probably have to check in at the insane asylum and not as staff.

It would make for one hell of a dissertation. Of course, if she tried to submit it, she might be submitted to the aforementioned asylum—this time involuntarily. No doubt if she tried to use some sort of photographic evidence of the SDF-1, they'd declare that she had photoshopped it.

Of course, if she lived through this emergency, she might consider getting herself checked into one. It would less stressful but she suspected that the food sucked and getting checked out would be a problem.

She stared hard at her monitors. _Weird. Very weird,_ the mind of Claudia Grant remarked. _It had gone far past weird and into the downright bizarre,_ was Denise Watts' rejoinder. She turned, "Sir? The airspace is getting … crowded out there."

Multiple glowing dots phasing in and out on her display screens. "Spatial distortions increasing …" she reported.

Lisa—or Lisa's analogue was studying the readings with intent interest. "RDF or UEG FOF tags?" she asked.

"I'm getting signals off them but nothing in our database," Claudia reported but Watts added in a bit sourly, "But I recognize at least one of them visually as being the _USS Enterprise_ from _Star Trek_."

She had dated a _Trekkie_ for about three months and had been forced to sit through all of the movies at **_least_** once. She managed to weasel out of seeing all of the television episodes though. Their relationship ended when he wanted her to wear Lieutenant Uhura's dress during sex. That's where she drew the line.

Of course, if she was standing in a fictional spaceship, why shouldn't other people be suffering like her and standing in another fictional spaceship and trying not to freak out? At least hers' came with some kickass weapons. _Oh God, she hoped her ex-boyfriend wasn't over there. She'd never hear the end of him crowing about it._

Ramius was staring at the display of ships—**_starships_** and hope swelled within him. "Open a radio frequency! Now!"

Denise looked at him in surprise and no little confusion, "Uh … to who sir?"

**"EVERYBODY!"**

* * *

**Bridge  
U.S.S Enterprise  
Naval Construction Contract (NCC) 1701  
Star Trek**

Jon was thinking that Snyder might have made a great monk.

Back during the Inquisition.

He was busy ranting about the immorality of teenagers, how he was going to be calling their parents, promising eternal damnation, and how the right-thinking people were going to be bringing back corporal punishment. Somehow he could just imagine the little Ferengi in a monk's robe, cackling as he tightened the screws on a rack while remarking, _'You have the right to scream all you want, I don't care.'_

It would have been a lot funnier though, if in Jon's fantasy that he wasn't the victim stretched out on the medieval torture device.

Suddenly, the Ops Guy who was temping as a Communications Officer suddenly got a focused look on his face, pressing the little communication earphone that looked like the modern day cellular earpieces and began tapping several on the control buttons on his board. "Er … Captain?" he said hesitantly.

Jon blinked and then realized that he was sitting the Chair. He was wearing the Shirt. Technically, he was the Ranking Officer even if he didn't feel like Captain James T. Kirk. Somehow, his costume suddenly felt a whole lot realer and heavier.

His voice didn't crack in the midst of his "Put it on speaker Lieutenant."

The Ops Lieutenant stabbed a button on his panel.

_"—we have lost control of our Space-Fold Engines! This ship and a wide region including the city of Sunnydale will soon be displaced, possibly into deep space. I urgently request that any ship that is capable of assisting us in moving out of the planetary atmosphere contact us immediately! If you are incapable of doing so, I urge—beg—you to take on as many civilians as possible and give them shelter! I repeat, this is Captain Ramius aboard the SDF-1! We have lost control of our Space-Fold Engines! This—"_

Jonathan blinked. He remembered _Robotech_ vaguely, it had been a few years back though. _How did it go again?_

"Well?! What are you waiting for? We have to get out of range of that flying deathtrap!" Snyder barked, waving his arms around.

"But what about the people—" the Ops Lieutenant sputtered.

"That's their tough luck! We have to look out for ourselves!" Snyder snapped.

Jon suddenly felt a surge of defiance, a surge of a starship captain. A surge of James T. Kirk. "This ship is not going anywhere! ETA to Space-Fold?" Jon asked urgently.

"Very interesting, the space/time constant is … changing," the guy dressed up as Spock murmured, consulting his readouts. "It is remarkably similar to a black hole," he commented.

"So basically, we're going to be squished into paste?" Jon blurted out horrified.

"I said similar, not identical," the Spock-wannabe retorted acidly, a bit of his human personality leeching through the logical, emotionless veneer. "I cannot be certain, this area is generating some sort of subspace and gravimetric instability—but perhaps less than 30 minutes."

30 minutes. Jon grimaced. Not much time. He glanced over to the red shirted adult, probably college aged and standing by the Engineering Station. "Chief Engineer, how many people can we beam up at a time?" he demanded.

"With all of the transporters, even the cargo ones?" the Scotty imitation said, cocking his head and thinking furiously. "36 people every three minutes. But at maximum transporter cycling, we'd only be able to transport about 200 people per half an hour. And the transporters weren't meant to be used continuously. We'd have to shut down them for about fifteen minutes after a max cycle and do some maintenance before transporting again or we risk burning them out. It'll be even longer for the cargo transporters—maybe twenty to thirty minutes; they're not optimized for molecular resolution for organic life forms."

Jon winced. 200 people. Out of 38,500 or so. The hard numbers made him quail. And that estimate probably didn't even take into account that the people they would be beaming up would be panicking or suspicious. They'd have to convince them to leave the transport pads and then guided to quarters and once again, convince them to remain there. Evacuations did **_not_** go smoothly. That would only increase the delays. Factor that in, maybe 150. If they were lucky.

"You can't … speed that up?" he asked hopefully.

"I cannae change the laws of physics! I'd have to literally swap out the pattern buffers an' the energizing coils!"

Jon blinked as Scotty's Highlander accent started thickening as his stress increased and became increasingly undecipherable.

"It wud take longer to do that than lettin' them cool down! I dinnae even know how many replacement spares we got! All those transporters working full blast, the stress an' strain on 'em makes it verra likely that they'll bollux up!"

Spock added, "In addition, we do not have the life support capacity nor the passenger room to fit Sunnydale's population of 38,500 individuals. At best, we might be hold approximately 660 for short periods and that would be with zero redundancies."

"And it'll be a tight squeeze," an environmental tech added with a wince.

"That's something!" Jon snapped. "Start beaming them up!"

Immediately the crew leapt into action and impatiently, Jon leapt to his feet as well and started pacing, "OK, we don't have the capacity to carry that many people, but the SDF-1 does if memory serves. What if we were to just transport people from Sunnydale over to the SDF-1 directly?"

Scotty scoffed. "Site-to-site transporting? Not bloody likely! We'd have to beam them up first, then transport them over! That'll cut down on our beam up rate too."

The environmental tech prompted, "Shuttle them over?"

"That'll take even longer," was the communications officer's dour response.

"Transporting directly to the SDF-1 is not feasible either. The molecular density of their external armor is incredibly high. While it does not block our transporter beams entirely, it does scatter and deflect them a great deal. We would have to be extremely close and I would estimate the odds for a successful transport to be rather high," Spock stated curtly.

"Why are we even wasting time with this!" Snyder cut in abruptly. "You're just a student! I'm the principal and what I say goes! And so does this ship! 200 people?! That's what? 1 lousy percent of the population? Faugh!" Snyder sneered and made a throwing away motion with his hand. "You have to know when to cut your losses and save what you can!"

A new voice interrupted them. "Excuse me, Captain? But I believe that we could save approximately 70 to 80 percent of the population of Sunnydale if we act quickly enough."

Jon whirled around at the Lieutenant Commander in a TNG uniform standing at the alcove of the turbolift judging by his collar rank pips. He must have entered the Bridge along with Principal Snyder. He had been so quiet and unobtrusive that Jon had missed him entirely. Well, a brass band could have going off and they might have missed it. He had a rather pasty, sallow skin and slicked back hair and for some reason, he sorta reminded Jon of the actor John Ritter from _Three's Company._

"We can? How?" Jon asked intently.

"By removing four of the Enterprise's primary shield generators, emplacing them at key points in Sunnydale with various modifications; we can create an overlapping atmospheric containment field that could prevent catastrophic loss of breathable air which would be the primary and most immediate cause of fatalities," the Lt. Commander recited curtly.

"Tha's nae possible! You cannae create an atmospheric containment field to encompass an entire city!" Scotty protested.

The Lieutenant Commander nodded in agreement. "That is correct. By 23rd Century technology, it is impossible. However 24th Century technology has improved the efficiency of shield generation. It is indeed possible providing that you modify them under my direction."

"Lieutenant Commander…?" Jon asked, fishing for more information.

"Buchanan. Ted Buchanan. But I suppose that it would more suitable for you to call me Data."

* * *

**TO BE CONTINUED...**

* * *

**A/N:** Dedicated for Tom Clancy who passed away this October 1, 2013 and who gave us _"The Hunt For Red October",_ Jack Ryan, and of course, Captain Marko Ramius. Thanks for creating such great characters that I had to play around with for myself.

For the record, I'm not fully conversant with the transporter capabilities of the Enterprise for you nitpickers out there. My transporter statistics are just the product of my own imagination for suitable dramatic effect, but I figure the Enterprise must have more than one transporter room with the transporter pads. I've never seen the Enterprise set up for a mass scale transporter evacuation.

My beta (and inspiration), Kedrann gave me a lot of help with correcting my numerous spelling errors, technical assistance regarding the effects of vacuum, and the final scene as well. Basically all of the good parts are because of him, the mistakes are mine.

I honestly hoped to post this chapter on Halloween, October 31st itself but story blockage prevented me from finishing up in time. Sorry. Hopefully, you won't have to wait until next year for your fix of _Halloween Universal_. But I make no promises. Flames will be ignored, but reviews will probably help me writing too.


End file.
